Emily Gold Mears “Discussing Dementia”

Inspired by her late father’s advanced dementia, Emily Gold Mears has embarked on her latest venture, a blog, to share the research that she has been compiling over the last three years. Grappling over the deterioration of her 91 year old father’s brilliant mind, Mears felt compelled to learn why her father was suffering from a disease other people his age were not harmed by. Out of fascination and fear, Mears became determined to learn everything about this horrific disease and search frantically for a cure or at least for anything that could delay the progression of dementia, and thus, her new blog, “Discussing Dementia,” was born.

In her blog, she expounds upon a number of research discoveries she has found to avoid and/or slow the effects of dementia. She has become an expert in the emerging field of Epigenetics, which is based on the theory that certain biological mechanisms turn on or turn off our genes and these controllable mechanisms are largely responsible for chronic diseases. There is a staggering statistic that 10% of disease is due to genes and the remaining 90% is due to lifestyle. She remarks how the current healthcare system is designed to effectively treat infections and accidents, but does not have the best approach to treating chronic disease–which is what will kill most of us today. Rather than treating symptoms with pharmaceuticals (the domain of allopathic medicine), a holistic approach which looks at the cause will prove to be the most effective.

There is a staggering statistic that 10% of disease is due to genes and the remaining 90% is due to lifestyle.

In a world where the number of people getting dementia is growing exponentially, Mears investigates past attempts made by the pharmaceutical industry to create drugs to address the amyloid plaques found in the brains of people with dementia. Finding that many of these factors thought to contribute to dementia are lifestyle choices and often can’t be monetize, explicating how there is an inherent financial disincentive for our healthcare system to “cure” dementia.

Mears’ Discussing Dementia follows her research on prevention and how to strengthen the immune system through a reflection of  the latest research and developments in dementia and Alzheimer’s research. To read more, click here.